7 The Nucleus, from Solid State Logic, is a 16 fader Mackie Control
8 device that includes many buttons, separate meters, two LCD displays
9 and other features. The device is not cheap (around US$5000 at the
10 time of writing), and has some <a href="#design">design features</a>
11 (or lack thereof) which some Ardour developers find
12 questionable. Nevertheless, it is a very flexible device, and makes
13 a nice 16 fader surface without the need to somehow attach an
14 extender to your main surface.
17 <h2>Pre-configuring the Nucleus</h2>
20 Your Nucleus comes complete with a number of "profiles" for a few
21 well-known DAWs. At the time of writing it does not include one for
22 Ardour (or related products such as Harrison Mixbus). This is
23 unfortunate because although Ardour could easily be used with any of
24 the existing profiles, one thing they all have in common is a
25 remarkably large of buttons not assigned to Mackie Control
26 functions. This means that using one of them will "waste" the
27 buttons, a resource that the Nucleus is not particularly rich in
28 (compared with some other Mackie Control devices).
33 <h2>Connecting the Nucleus</h2>
36 Unlike most Mackie Control devices, the Nucleus uses an ethernet
37 connection to send and receive the MIDI messages that make up the
38 Mackie Control protocol. Specifically, it uses a technology called
39 "ipMIDI" which essentially "broadcasts" MIDI messages on a local
40 area network, so that any connected devices (computers, control
41 surfaces, tablets etc.) can participate.
44 All other DAWs so far that support the Nucleus have chosen to do so
45 by using a 3rd party MIDI driver called "ipMIDI", which creates a
46 number of "virtual" MIDI ports on your computer. You, the user,
47 tells the DAW which ports to connect to, and ipMIDI takes care of
51 Ardour has builtin ipMIDI support, with no need of any 3rd party
52 packages, and no need to identify the "ports" to connect to in order
53 to communicate with the Nucleus. This makes setting it up a bit
54 easier than most other systems.
57 Unless ... you already installed the ipMIDI driver in order to use
58 some other DAW with your Nucleus. If ipMIDI is configured to create
59 any "ports", it is not possible for Ardour's own ipMIDI support to
60 function. We decided to offer both methods of communicating with
61 your Nucleus. If you regularly use other DAWs, and appreciate having
62 ipMIDI permanently set up to communication with the Nucleus - that's
63 OK, you can tell Ardour to use the ipMIDI driver you already
64 have. But if you're not using other DAWs with the Nucleus (and thus
65 have not installed the ipMIDI driver), then you can ignore the
66 ipMIDI driver entirely, and let Ardour connect directly with no
70 <h3>Connecting via Ardour's own ipMIDI support</h3>
72 <p class="alert alert-info">
73 This is usable only on computers with no 3rd party ipMIDI
74 driver software installed and configured. If you have the OS X or
75 Windows ipMIDI driver from nerds.de, it <strong>MUST</strong> be
76 configured to offer <strong>ZERO</strong> ports before using this
81 Open <code>Preferences > Control Surfaces</code>. Ensure that the
82 Mackie protocol is enabled, then double-click on it to open the
83 Mackie Control setup dialog.
86 Ensure that the device selected is "SSL Nucleus". The dialog should
87 show a single numerical selector control below it, defining the
88 ipMIDI port number to use (it should almost always be left at the
89 default value of 21928).
92 Communication is automatically established with the Nucleus and you
96 If this does not work, then make sure your network cables are
97 properly connected, and that you are <strong>not</strong> running
98 other ipMIDI software on the computer.
101 <h2><a name="design">Nucleus Design Discussion</a></h2>
104 You might be reading this part of the manual seeking some guidance
105 on whether the Nucleus would make a suitable control surface for
106 your workflows. We don't want to try to answer that question
107 definitively, since the real answer depends on the very specific
108 details of your workflow and situation, but we would like to point
109 out a number of design features of the Nucleus that might change
115 <dt>No Master Faster</dt>
117 <dt>No dedicated rec-enable buttons</dt>
118 <dd>You have to press the "Rec" button and convert the per-strip
119 "Select" buttons into rec-enables</dd>
120 <dt>No dedicated automation buttons</dt>
121 <dd>You have to press the "Auto" button and convert the first 4
122 vpots into 4 automation-related buttons, losing your current view
124 <dt>No buttons with Mackie-defined "Marker" functionality</dt>
125 <dd>Mackie's design intentions for the interoperation of the
126 Marker, rewind and ffwd buttons requires profile editing in order
127 to function properly.
129 <dt>No "Dyn" button</dt>
130 <dd>This is hard to assign in an edited profile. To be fair, other
131 Mackie Control devices also lack this button.
137 <dt>Single cable connectivity</dt>
138 <dd>No need for multiple MIDI cables to get 16 faders</dd>
139 <dt>Broadcast connectivity</dt>
140 <dd>Connecting to multiple computers does not require recabling</dd>
141 <dt>15 faders from a single box</dt>
142 <dd>No need to figure out how to keep extenders together</dd>
143 <dt>Meters separated from displays</dt>
144 <dd>Contrast with the Mackie Control Universal Pro, where meters
145 interfere with the display
147 <dt>DAW profiles</dt>
148 <dd>Easy to flip profiles for use by different DAWs.</dd>
154 <dt>Ability to make buttons generate USB keyboard events</dt>
155 <dd>The extent to which this is useful reflects the target DAWs
156 inability to manage all of its functionality via Mackie Control
158 <dt>Sophisticated "profile" editing</dt>
159 <dd>It is nice to be able to reassign the functionality of most
160 buttons, but this is only necessary because of the relatively few
161 global buttons on the surface.